“Biography of Arthur W. Jackson 1880-1961: An American Pioneer in Guam” tells the life story of the professor's grandfather , who came to Guam as a Marine.

“My grandfather, Arthur William Jackson, loved the Pacific and, especially, his adopted home, our beautiful island of Guam,” said Jackson, a former dean of students at UOG, former director of the Guam Department of Youth Affairs and a retired colonel of the Guam National Guard.

Significant in island's growth, development

Though he knew very little about his grandfather before his research, he knew the years his grandfather spent on Guam were significant in the island’s growth and development.

“Although my contacts with him were limited, I felt compelled to write about his life and share the information with those who share his lineage in Guam,” he said. “When he arrived in 1903 as a Marine, except for brief periods of sea duty and his hospitalization at U.S. Naval Hospital, Japan, that lasted approximately three months, he never left Guam. Of course, the one major exception being his incarceration in Japan, and that was for the whole duration of World War II.”

The Marine was an American prisoner of war captured on Guam, shipped to Japan in January 1941, Jackson said. He wasn't released until September 1945, following Japan’s surrender.

Committed to Guam

Jackson’s grandfather had to choose whether to return to the mainland U.S. when he completed his Marine Corps enlistment in 1907, and decided to stay on Guam.

“He chose to remain and be a part of the effort to build an American community on Guam, following its acquisition as an American territory in 1898,” Jackson said. “He was passionate about his commitment to Guam. He even learned how to speak Chamoru and adopted the local culture.”

While living on Guam, the elder Jackson’s role on island as a Marine was helping set up public education on the island.

After he was discharged from the Marine Corps, he served the island in different ways for the rest of his life: as a teacher, village deputy commissioner and administrator, attorney and notary public.

Presentation at UOG

Jackson will present the biography to the Micronesian Area Research Center at 2 p.m. June 19, on the second floor of the MARC offices at UOG. The community is invited to the presentation to meet the author and learn more about the book and his journey of discovery while writing it.

Jackson will also take book orders at the presentation and will make the book available by print on demand. After the presentation, the MARC will make a copy available in its collection for members of the community to access.

“These pages will inform you of life during different eras of history,” the author’s niece, Lilli Ann Perez, wrote in her foreword to the book. “They will amuse you with the life experiences that evolved over multiple generations. They will keep you in suspense as you read about the traumatic events associated with the devastation brought on by war and the hope nurtured with the re-establishment of peace. They hold still, moments strewn across decades of time. They embrace emotions borne by those whose life experiences were raw and exposed. This text will add to Guam’s genealogical data and to information on social supports, and surviving historical trauma.”